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"passively viewing a typical flower image can lead to preferred states of emotion, automatic nervous system, and endocrine function after stressful events. Second, in our fMRI examination, we investigated brain-activation patterns relevant to unintentional emotional change during passive viewing of the typical flower image, and observed reduced activation in the right amygdala–hippocampus region while viewing the flower image compared to other stimuli. Our results suggest that viewing flowers can reduce activation in the amygdala–hippocampus and decrease negative emotion and physiological responses automatically. The simple strategy of viewing a flower after psychological stress could support recovery from stressful events in both psychological and physiological terms. The present results also imply that viewing a flower can induce automatic distraction and might help diminish several psychiatric or physiological risks, such as depression, anxiety, cardiovascular diseases or immune dysfunction, that are caused by chronic stress. "